Bastions Or Burdens? Assessing The Role Of Anglo-American Hospital Ships During The World Wars

Military historians rarely examine the evacuation of battlefield casualties. This project seeks to help remedy this deficiency by assessing the role of Anglo-American hospital ships during the First and Second World War. As far back as the eighteenth-century, military forces on both sides of the Atlantic have relied on hospital ships to provide a quick, efficient, safe, and comfortable means of evacuation for battlefield casualties. By observing their long-term development, and considering their performance in a number of battles around the world, this work argues that British and American hospital ships were a critically important presence in combat operations during the global conflicts of the early twentieth-century. At the same time, it also demonstrates that the era of the First and Second World represent the “golden age” of hospital ships. Following the Second World War, the ever-changing face of modern warfare led to a decline in both countries’ use of hospital ships. These ships, which had at one time represented bastions of safety and healing, ultimately became burdens to military powers who began to rely on other means of evacuating their casualties.